Video Transcription

This is the Vexilar FLX-28 the world’s most versatile ice fishing sonar system ever developed. This system is packed with features that you have got to see to believe. For example it offers a digital depth and auto ranging feature. Which allows you to simply put the transducer in the hole and it does everything for you automatically, and it gives you a digital depth readout. Of course it has ranges to 300 feet and that’s really cool to and you have a manual override mode if you like to do it the old-fashioned way and flick the settings yourself.

But this unit offers 20 IR settings. So when you’re fishing around other guys you won’t have to worry about interference. The 20 IR settings are almost guaranteed to knock out interference from other anglers around you. It has built in a battery status indicators so you always know the condition of your battery. And it comes with the available option of five different color settings, so you pick the color setting that you like best. You can have up to five colors at one time not just three anymore and that’s really cool.

Of course Vexilar is the world leader in performance and this unit offers 1/4 inch target ID and it has industry leading 525 lines of resolution, so it really gives you some great resolution. All these features are possible because of Vexilar’s new brushless data transfer system, which allows for huge amounts of data to be transferred to the spinning wheel of the LED display, it’s very cool.

But then again this unit has a lot of the classic features that Vexilar fans love. Like the auto zoom ranges this has two of them, 6 and 12 foot. What do they do? Simple they allow you to zoom in on the bottom 6 foot of the water column. So say you’re fishing in say 20 or 30 or 40 feet of water and you’re fishing for a perch. This allows you to zoom in on the bottom 6 foot of the water column as if you were only fishing in 6 foot of water. Amazing resolution, but of course this unit has some other nice features like a day and night mode. You see in the daytime you will see as the brightest daylight display possible but at night it almost is too bright. So you can switch down those lights and switch it to the night mode.

It also has a shallow water feature because this unit is very powerful because it has ranging to 300 feet. But now you can put it in shallow water mode for better sharper signals in shallow water and it also has a special weed mode if you like fishing in weeds. Very cool feature indeed. Of course it comes standard with a soft pack carrying case and Vexilar’s 2 years warranty.

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The Vexilar FL Digital Depth Indicator (Video)

A video presentation on the Vexilar FL Digital Depth Indicator. ...read more

Video Transcription

Here’s a great product from Vexilar and it’s called the DD-100. The DD-100 means Digital Depth. Yes now you have a digital depth display while you’re fishing with your Vexilar. The DD-100 adapts to any model Vexilar on the market today. No matter how old it is you can upgrade your Vexilar to have a digital depth display. Now how cool is that. And it fits on any Pro-Pack, Ultra-pack or Genz-Pack, the holes are already predesigned for it. The same holes that you would use to mount your D-130 battery status indicator are the same holes you would use for the DD-100. Even by pushing the task button here you actually get battery status as well, so you will always know the condition of your battery.

So the DD–100 is a great add-on accessory to any current Vexilar, and best yet all new models of Vexilar Pro-Packs and Ultra-Packs comes standard with the DD-100. read less

The Vexilar FishPhone Mobile Underwater Camera App (Video)

A video presentation on the Vexilar Fishphone Mobile Underwater Camera App. ...read more

Video Transcript

Welcome to the FishPhone the world’s first Wi-Fi underwater camera system. It is really cool. Have you downloaded the free app yet? You’ll need to. Just go to the Google Play store or the Apple store and key word search FishPhone one word and you’ll be able to download the app and the app will allow you the ability to start using the system. Of course the app will have no purpose unless you actually buy one of the FishPhone systems. But this is a good tutorial to see what you’re getting because it’s very robust and very cool indeed.

First off the FishPhone comes with a color black and white camera. This means when the light conditions are good, the image you see will be in color. If it’s dark and gloomy, it will automatically shift to a black and white mode for best results.

Inside of your carrying case system which holds 50 foot of cable is a 12V 4.5Amph battery. It will actually power your T-Box for 12 to 18 hours, and on the owner’s manual it says only 6 hours or on the package it says 6. But it does have an extendedly long play time. The battery itself needs to be charged regularly and if you don’t recharge it regularly you will hurt it. And no you do not want to drain the battery down completely before you recharge. The more you recharge your battery, the healthier it will be and it will last for many, many years.

Now with your system will come a 1Amph fully automatic digital charger. This digital charger when plugged into the wall will light up as green. You plug it into the charging port in the front and now it will turn red. When it turns back to green again your battery is fully charged. You can leave it on all the time if you want and you will never overcharge your battery. This is Vexilar’s premier charger and it really is a fine piece of technology for keeping your battery in good working condition.

On top of the battery is the amazing T-Box Wi-Fi transmitter. It is truly amazing what this will do. It will send the signal about 100 feet. Now that’s under optimum conditions. If you have a lot of obstructions, and even in the inside of buildings for example the Wi-Fi signal is not as strong as it will be out on the lake. The higher the transmitter is the longer the range it will have radiating a Wi-Fi signal.

You will also find that you also have a video out port so if you do have another monitor, you can tap right to the monitor. This product is used a lot for ice fishing I the winter time. A lot of guys have these really fancy fish houses (I don’t have unfortunately) but they do. And they will have another TV monitor in the background and you can connect directly to the TV monitor with this output. And as you can see this system also has an overhaul suspension arm and that’s actually used to hold the camera and suspend it exactly where you want to put it. And the egg that’s mounted on the cable allows you to adjust the camera to sit anyway you want to sit. So that’s very cool.

This system has a one year warranty and it has a 50 foot cable like I mentioned. It’s really works quite simply. Now powering up the app is so easy it will only take a few minutes. Now again when you download the app you will go from there but let’s start as if you have already downloaded the app. Your first step especially for the initialization of the system; every time you start up within a new device you have to tell the device that you’re looking for this Wi-Fi channel. So your first step in the system is to go into your settings mode. Let me get in here and see if I can show you that’s what I’m going on. I go into settings and in the settings, you look under Wi-Fi you’ll highlight Wi-Fi. Now when you turn your FishPhone system on it will start to blink after a while it takes about 30 seconds before it starts to blink. But there it says, there is a FishPhone right there and I’m going to highlight the FishPhone.

Well but the problem is the first time you use assisting you’ve got to tell it that you want to look at it. So this is kind of like going to a McDonalds, you have to log into the Wi-Fi channel. Well the Wi-Fi channel here has a password and it’s 12345678. Now the system knows that this tablet is approved to receive this Wi-Fi channel. There is a little check there. With android systems it says a WPA code but the password is always the same 12345678.

Once you’ve logged in the first time the system will always recognize you so that you don’t have to do this procedure all the time. But it’s an important first step. Now all you simply have to do is to go back to your app and it’s loading of course. You hit the agree. Now in this menu setting here; this is your main menu setting. You can access this without having the actual FishPhone system. The operation manual is a virtual one so you can actually download the manual at any time so you can get the directions on how to take care of it. And the Wi-Fi system setup simply allows you to change the opening password so that you can let other people use it or keep it proprietary for yourself.

And just simply hit the connect now and now the system is actually looking back at me (oh there I am hello). What I can do here at this mode setting is that I can turn on or off the lights in the camera and I don’t know if we can see that. Here we go I just want to make sure you can see the camera lights going on and off. You can control light density of course by the controls as well here. And you also have the ability to take a still picture or record a video of what you’re doing and it goes directly to the library. You just go to the library and library shows you all the different videos and clips that we’ve just filmed. You can actually see it running the video I just got through filming. It’s absolutely amazing what this thing does, it's truly amazing.

Now one of the things that I need to stress; it’s that simple to operate by the way. You put in your password 12345678. You hit connect now and you’re done. But I want to stress that anybody can get this password from you or you can give it to them if you want to make it proprietary. And there is an unlimited amount of people can watch that signal being transmitted, so there is no limit. You don’t have to have cell phone reception, it will work anywhere in the world.

Now turning on and off your system is a simple function. You turn on, you turn on, the little red light comes on. When transmitting it’s blinking, that’s a good thing. Okay now when you want to shut it off you simply. read less

Vexilar How To Do The Split Shot Test (Video)

A video presentation on Vexilar, How to Do the Split Shot Test. ...read more

Video Transcript

Hi Tom Zenanko here for today’s tech tip on comparing different sonar systems for target separation, target ID and overall power. You know I’ve been getting inundated with phone calls, lately everyone says how comes Vexilar has 400 W of power and Markham has 500 W, Hummingbird has 8000 W of power. With all this extra power than of Vexilar, how does this system work?

Here I have devised a simple test. Now granted I’m not a scientist, I’m just a fisherman like you guys out there conducting a test in the back of a little trainer here. But what I’ve done is I’ve drilled a hole and I’ve mounted all three transducers the same depth below me suspended. And I've taken a BB size split shot, now let me show you what I’ve done here. I’ve taken the split shots and I’ve taken a ruler and I have moved them exactly 2 1/2 inches apart. Let’s see if I can get 2 1/2 inches here. I want to be 2 1/2 inches apart because that is a point that a lot of people are totally unaware of. Okay 2 1/2 inches is right about their okay.

Now at 2 1/2 inches these two little split shots are going to be seen in 45 feet of water. Know what I’m going to do it is I’m going to drop these babies down. Now I have to put a disclaimer on this thing, these are units right out of the box. We didn’t modify them or change them in any way. We simply took the Markham LX5, the Hummingbird Ice55 and of course the Vexilar this is a 22 but I’ve done it with all of them so it really doesn’t make a difference which one we use. In this case I’ll turn on the Vexilar. Now the Vexilar at first glance is very easy to operate. You turn it to the 50 foot range because we are in 45 feet of water you turn to the 50 foot move closer in 45 feet of water. And if we want to go to the zoom range all we do is we hit AZ range and I’m set. I’m ready to start fishing and now I’m watching my jig go down on the side. Why don’t you come on in here and you can see what I’m talking about here.

Here is my little jig going down and I’ll see this is a class issue of what I’m talking about when we talk about the resolution. The entire 45 feet depth of the water column is compressed into the side of the display. And all you can see is the jig going down at least the two split shots going down. You have no idea that there are actually 2 split shots here. But once you get the split shots within a 6 foot range of the bottom. I’m going to stop it here, I want to suspended dead I don’t want to move it. If you jiggle it, it kinds of falsify the signal. But what to do is once you got down there all you have to do is then turn down the gain and you can clearly see that there are 2 individual split shots there and at 2 1/2 inches 2 individual split shots. You can easily see them 1 – 2. It’s amazing how the resolution is so sharp.

For all you tech heads out there who love to test things for yourself, I encourage you conduct your own split shot test to find out firsthand what other brands of sonar can tell you compared to a Vexilar. To do this split shot test accurately you need to be fair and uniform in how you conduct the test with any sonar. So I suggest you follow these directions as closely as possible.

First off you want to use units of equal age. The last thing you want to do is compare a 10-year-old system to one that just came from out of the box. And they don’t have to be new systems just keeping them the same approximate age is another way of keeping things fair. Now let’s get started. First thing you need to do is get in 45 feet of water or more. You want to suspend all transducers evenly just below the bottom of the ice. Then you want to use 2 split shot size sinkers. Now you want to have a ruler handy or some type of measuring device to make sure you get the split shots set correctly. And of course you want to use a light line, a 2 pound test line is recommended.

Do not move the split shots once they are down and stop them about 5 feet above the bottom. Be sure to use the zoom feature of any unit tested to maximize display resolution. Now adjust the gain and transducer cone angles to get you the best signal display. To document the differences between the units use a camera with a shutter speed set at 1/30 of a second. By following this checklist you’ll have a great time seeing the true differences between Vexilar and any other flasher sonar systems on the market today.

Now I’m going to do one more test to really blow you away and this involves taking the split shot test to the extreme. Now again you can conduct this test if you got some friends that have a Hummingbird or a Markham unit. You can do this test yourself. As you see this is on edited, this is as it happens, there is nothing magical about what I’ve done and I’ve done this test several times to outdoor writer groups and organizations all around the country. But I wanted to put it on tape so that everybody could see once and for all that power doesn’t mean superior sonar. Power just means a waste of energy so you don’t get as much battery use and you as an angular don’t get to take full advantage of what the three color sonar systems can do.

Now here we go. I’m going to 1 inch. Now I want to see in 40 feet of water if the Vexilar can show target separation ( I did it off my wrist watch here). Can show target separation of 1 inch and I don’t think I can because my watch just ate my line, oh here she goes. Let’s go back down. It’s totally fascinating to me when I do this test to people because they always hear these stories about how more power means better sonar and all this stuff and these guys actually try to defend this inferior technology compared to Vexilar.

Now the Vexilar is not one to play these types of games and I know we want to again put a disclaimer on this test to show that this test is as it happens. We didn’t doctor or modify this in any way, shape or form. But we wanted to show you this, to show to all of our Vexilar fans out there why we have millions of people who love the Vexilar sonar system. It’s because it does indeed supply you with more information, better information to make you a better angler. And that’s why millions of people would never go fishing without a Vexilar.

So let’s do the ultimate test. We’re down to 1 inch, let’s see if we can see target separation at 1 inch. Right now we have actually got an orange, 2 orange and 2 greens. And we back it down even more to see if I can get the greens to separate. Which is really challenging, how do you like that? I hope the camera can pick that up because it’s very obvious here that there are two very distinct lines at 1 inch for target separation. I’ll turn up the gain in the orange setting, I’ve got target separation here as well. Two different, never these are two split shots 1 inch apart in 40 feet of water.

I’m Tom Zenanko for Ice Fishing Today and be sure to check out all these facts and we have a lot more fun stuff that we’ve done to show how superior Vexilar sonar technology is on… read less